Saving Seafood

Oregon, California coastal Chinook Salmon move closer to Endangered Species Protection

January 27, 2023 — In response to a petition by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity and Umpqua Watersheds, the National Marine Fisheries Service determined today that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act.

“I’m pleased that Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California are that much closer to being protected under the Endangered Species Act,” said Meg Townsend, freshwater attorney at the Center. “These giants among Pacific salmon are irreplaceable icons of the Pacific Northwest. Chinooks bring important nutrients from the ocean to our forests, feed endangered Southern Resident orcas, and are a source of food and admiration for communities up and down the coast.”

Chinook are anadromous, returning from the ocean to the freshwater streams where they were born to reproduce. The Oregon and California Chinook salmon populations contain both early and late-run variants, otherwise known as spring-run and fall-run Chinook salmon.

Spring-run Chinook salmon enter coastal rivers from the ocean in the spring and migrate upstream as they mature, holding in deep pools in rivers through the summer, and spawning in early fall in the upper reaches of watersheds. Conversely, fall-run Chinook enter the rivers in the fall and spawn shortly thereafter.

Read the full story at the Tillamook Headlight Herald

Federal approvals clear way for Klamath River dam removals

January 18, 2023 — A decades-long effort to remove four dams on the lower Klamath River in California and Oregon would be the largest dam removal in the world. The dam removals would reopen access to more than 400 miles of habitat for threatened coho salmon, Chinook salmon, steelhead trout, and other threatened native fish.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Nov. 17 gave final approval for the surrender of utility licensing for the dams, clearing the way for their removal as part of the restoration effort.

NOAA is one of many partners collaborating to build a network of restored habitat that can support these species once the dams are removed. NOAA, the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission, and Trout Unlimited have released a detailed plan for restoring habitat in a key portion of the watershed.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Oregon Coast’s Chinook salmon among populations under review for endangered-species listing

January 17, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service, also known as NOAA Fisheries, is considering a request from several environmental groups seeking to list two types of Chinook salmon as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. One population lives along the Oregon Coast and the other farther south along the Oregon-California border.

Three environmental groups sent the petition last August showing that numerous threats have caused a sharp decline in spring-run Chinook salmon. Those groups are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Native Fish Society and Umpqua Watersheds.

Unlike fall-run Chinook, the spring-run salmon enter rivers still sexually immature and remain there through the summer.

“While they’re in the rivers in the summer there’s a lot more opportunities for factors that threaten the species, like pollution, hot water temperatures, habitat issues, to affect the species,” said Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Meg Townsend.

Read the full article at OPB

Electronic monitoring technologies help Alaska pollock fisheries

January 17, 2023 — The challenge to get observers for the pollock fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea led to the use of electronic  monitoring technologies, which are empowering the pollock fleet.

The Alaska pollock fishery is one of the most valuable in the world, and that may explain why it has been at the core of some experimental projects that aim to allow for better management of resources while minimizing impacts to other species, like the Chinook salmon, that are commercially and culturally valuable species. According to NOAA, “the pollock fishery has a very low rate of bycatch (less than 1 percent)” but, still, there is, says the agency, “a cap on Chinook bycatch. When it’s met, the fishery for pollock is closed.”

The system has worked well. NOAA noted, recently, that “the pollock fishery in Alaska’s Bering Sea is rationalized, which means each vessel/permit holder is allocated a certain amount of catch for the season. But the Gulf of Alaska pollock fishery is open access, with every vessel racing against the others for catch.”

Read the full article at National Fisherman

Oregon, NorCal Chinook salmon move closer to endangered species

January 12, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced Wednesday that the Oregon Coast and southern Oregon/Northern California Coast Chinook salmon may need protection under the Endangered Species Act.

This comes as a response to a petition filed by the Native Fish Society, Center for Biological Diversity, and Umpqua Watersheds back in August of last year.

The service said it will review whether Chinook salmon should be listed as an Endangered Species.

“I’m pleased that Chinook salmon in Oregon and Northern California are that much closer to being protected under the Endangered Species Act,” said Meg Townsend, freshwater attorney at the Center.

Read the full article at KATU

California’s endangered salmon population plummets amid new threat

January 4, 2022 — They’ve been pushed to the brink of extinction by dams, drought, extreme heat and even the flare of wildfires, but now California’s endangered winter-run Chinook salmon appear to be facing an entirely new threat—their own ravenous hunger for anchovies.

After the worst spawning season ever in 2022, scientists now suspect the species’ precipitous decline is being driven by its ocean diet.

Researchers hypothesize that the  are feasting too heavily on anchovies, a fish that is now swarming the California coast in record numbers. Unfortunately for the salmon, anchovies carry an enzyme called thiaminase, which breaks down —a vitamin that is essential to cell function in all living things.

“These are fish that returned to the river early this year and then spawned in the spring and early summer. They had really low thiamine,” said Nate Mantua, a fisheries researcher with the National Marine Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz. Concentrations were “worse than last year.”

In humans, a critical deficiency of thiamine, or vitamin B1, can lead to heart failure and nerve damage. In female salmon that are returning to rivers and streams to spawn, thiamine deficiency can be passed on to their many hatchlings, which suffer problems swimming and experience high rates of death, researchers say.

Now, with government agencies and Native American tribes fearing the collapse of the winter-run Chinook, scientists are embarking on a campaign to determine why the anchovy population has exploded off the California coast, and why winter-run Chinook are seemingly ignoring all other prey.

“The very unusual thing about their diet is that it’s been so focused on anchovies and so lacking in other things that historically they have been found eating,” Mantua said. “It is something we don’t have great information on.”

Read the full article at PHYS.org

The fight of the Salmon People

December 29, 2022 — April 2022, early spring Chinook season

Total tribal catch in 2021: 1.605 million pounds, including the worst spring season in 22 years

The salmon were late and the nets were empty.

Two weeks had passed since the Yakama Nation opened its ceremonial and subsistence spring fishing season on the Columbia River. Randy Settler and Sam George had spent $400 on gas for their boats, and had just two fish so far to give to their tribe for ceremonies.

This year’s salmon fishing was forecast to be better than last year’s. But it was the slowest start to a season that Settler could remember. It was also his first season without his mother, Mary Goudy-Settler, who died in October 2021.

Settler was sitting in the riverside house that used to be hers, reflecting on all that had been taken from his family, all his parents had done to claw back what they could. They had fought for their right to fish, a right the U.S. government promised to honor more than 150 years ago and then violated generation after generation through laws, policies and flat-out discrimination. He inherited that fight. Now, with climate change threatening the remaining salmon runs, he thinks about the legacy they left for him, the one he’ll pass down to his nephew, George, and to George’s 10-year-old daughter.

“Áwna sɨ́nwit UllaQut’.” His eyes welled up when he introduced himself by the Yakama name his mother gave him.

“But I’ve never claimed that name,” Settler, 67, later said.

The name, UllaQut’, translates to “frog.” It means more than that.

Mary Goudy-Settler and tribal elders bestowed it in a traditional ceremony when her son was 42, the same year he was elected to the governing council of their tribe.

It is a variant on the name of a famous war chief, one that Settler is tied to through his family’s lineage. To carry that name, he said, “you have to be a big deal in Indian Country.”

He has spent a lot of his life trying to live up to it.

Read the full article at OPB

Saving salmon: Chinook return to California’s far north — with a lot of human help

December 10, 2022 — Winter-run Chinook were federally listed as endangered in 1994, but recent years have been especially hard for the fish. Facing severe drought and warm river conditions, most winter-run salmon born naturally in the Sacramento River have perished over the past three years.

So restoring Chinook to the McCloud has become an urgent priority for state and federal officials. In the first year of a drought-response project, about 40,000 salmon eggs were brought back to the McCloud, a picturesque river in the wilderness of the Cascade mountains.

Iconic in Northern California, Chinook salmon are critical pieces of the region’s environment. They are consumed by sea lions, orcas and bears, and they still support a commercial fishing industry. Chinook remain vital to the culture and traditional foods of Native Americans, including the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, whose historical salmon fishing grounds included the McCloud River.

Conservation experts say the McCloud’s cold, clean water holds great promise as a potential Chinook refuge — and perhaps even a future stronghold for the species. Restoring salmon there is considered critical to the species’ survival, since they now spawn only in low-lying parts of the Central Valley near Redding and Red Bluff, where it’s often too hot and dry for most newborn fish to survive.

Read the full article at ABC 10

Chinook salmon lawsuit still looms over Alaska trollers

September 22, 2022 — A lawsuit filed against the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a U.S. district court in Washington state on 8 August, 2022, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.

The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that local trollers catch.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Chinook lawsuit still looms over Alaska trollers

September 7, 2022 –A lawsuit filed against National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a Washington district court on Aug. 8, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.

The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that Southeast trollers catch.

The premise of the case is that NMFS, in its biological opinion, did not consider a portion of the commingling stocks as forage fish for a pod of 74 killer whales in Puget Sound, rendering the agency out of compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Like other legal battles between the fishing industry and environmental groups, this case stems from differing interpretations of the data.

The Wild Fish Conservancy contends that 97 percent of the troll-caught chinooks originate in drainages outside of Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, meanwhile, estimates those numbers between 30 and 80 percent, and that the percentages vary each year.

Though some feared that a subsequent injunction filed by the conservancy could stop the fishery after the initial case was filed in 2020, that didn’t happen.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman